Someone please help me, just bought Garmin Etrex H & need to know

[cnh624]

We leave early tomorrow to go on our camping trip. I have programmed the coordinates for the 4 caches in the Garmin as waypoints. Now my question is this, when hiking down the trail, how will I know if we are getting close or not? I wanted to do a test run on a cache near my house but it has not worked out for us to do it so I'm stuck trying to figure this out on the road with an impatient husband and 4 children. Please if anyone can help me, I would be so grateful.

[+Team Polarbear]

We leave early tomorrow to go on our camping trip. I have programmed the coordinates for the 4 caches in the Garmin as waypoints. Now my question is this, when hiking down the trail, how will I know if we are getting close or not? I wanted to do a test run on a cache near my house but it has not worked out for us to do it so I'm stuck trying to figure this out on the road with an impatient husband and 4 children. Please if anyone can help me, I would be so grateful.

 

I don't have an Etrex I have a Legend but I would think it would work pretty well the same.

 

To test: Stand at your front door and do a mark to establish a waypoint. Call it Home. Go down the block, turn on the GPS and bring up Home under Find. You should be able to see a compass and the distance in either meters or feet. If you see that, then walk according to the arrow and it should lead you home. As you get closer to home (cache) the distance keeps getting less and less until you are very close.

Best I can do on short notice.

Edited May 25, 2008 by Team Polarbear

[+El Diablo]

We leave early tomorrow to go on our camping trip. I have programmed the coordinates for the 4 caches in the Garmin as waypoints. Now my question is this, when hiking down the trail, how will I know if we are getting close or not? I wanted to do a test run on a cache near my house but it has not worked out for us to do it so I'm stuck trying to figure this out on the road with an impatient husband and 4 children. Please if anyone can help me, I would be so grateful.

 

When you are ready to hunt, bring up the cache and tell your unit to go to. If your a ways away tell it to follow the road. When you get to your parking area you want to tell it to go off road. Navigate to your map page and just follow the arrow. It will constantly adjust and tell you how far away. It starts in miles, then degree of miles. When you get less than .1 miles it will change to feet.

 

I hope that helped.

 

El Diablo

[cnh624]

It sorta helps, but I know where to get started because each cache is located somewhere along the state park trails so I can physically without electronic assistance get to the trailhead and can hike the whole trail but wondered how I would know if I'm near or if I passed the cache? I guess in other words, how will the GPS "tell" me I've gone too far? I wish they just came with audio "saying you are getting hot" or "you are getting cold". Thanks.

[+El Diablo]

It sorta helps, but I know where to get started because each cache is located somewhere along the state park trails so I can physically without electronic assistance get to the trailhead and can hike the whole trail but wondered how I would know if I'm near or if I passed the cache? I guess in other words, how will the GPS "tell" me I've gone too far? I wish they just came with audio "saying you are getting hot" or "you are getting cold". Thanks.

There will be an arrow pointing to the cache. If it begins to point behind you, you've gone past it. Also it will tell you how many feet away you are. If the number of feet is increasing, rather than decreasing, you've gone past it.

 

That help?

 

El Diablo

[cnh624]

It sorta helps, but I know where to get started because each cache is located somewhere along the state park trails so I can physically without electronic assistance get to the trailhead and can hike the whole trail but wondered how I would know if I'm near or if I passed the cache? I guess in other words, how will the GPS "tell" me I've gone too far? I wish they just came with audio "saying you are getting hot" or "you are getting cold". Thanks.

There will be an arrow pointing to the cache. If it begins to point behind you, you've gone past it. Also it will tell you how many feet away you are. If the number of feet is increasing, rather than decreasing, you've gone past it.

 

That help?

 

El Diablo

 

Yes!! Thanks so much!!!

[+El Diablo]

Keep in mind that a GPS unit calculates as the crow flies. If you are on a trail that winds or increases, decreases in elevation the unit won't reflect that. I've been in the parking lot where the unit showed the cache a 100 yards away. It was. Straight up the mountain. The hike however was about a half of a mile.

 

El Diablo